Advertisers hot for iPad, even though details are murky

Companies are lining up to get their ads on the iPad, despite the lingering …

Major companies are rushing to secure advertising space from print and Web publishers that will have iPad-specific apps or websites ready for the product's launch on April 3. This is despite the fact that there are plenty of unknowns when it comes to how advertising on the iPad will work.

A report from The New York Times notes that a number of large corporations, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, Unilever, Toyota, Capital One, Oracle, and GM have already bought up advertising from the likes of Newsweek, Reuters, Time, Wall Street Journal, and NYT itself. In fact, Chase has bought out all of the NYT advertising units for two full months following the iPad's introduction to advertise its high-end Chase Sapphire credit card.

"There is an appetite to be associated with the inevitable buzz—the buzz around the iPad has been so long-lived,"Alisa Bowen, senior vice president and head of consumer publishing at Thomson Reuters, told NYT.

The deals will bring in plenty of money for those publishers, at least in the short term. Ads are running anywhere from $75,000 to $300,000, with higher prices buying exclusivity. FedEx, for instance, has three-month deals to be the exclusive advertiser for Reuters' and Newsweek's iPad apps.Time is charging $200,000 for a single spot in its first eight issues designed for the iPad. And WSJ has four-month deals with several companies that cost $400,000.

Advertisers are hungry for opportunities to engage consumers in advertising that is more interactive than traditional print—a declining market—and the iPad offers opportunities worth paying for. Steve Pacheco, FedEx's director of advertising, told WSJ that the options will be "mind-blowing."

"You are taking something that used to be flat on a page and making it interactive and have it jump off the page," he said.

The excitement may quickly fade depending on a number of factors. Pricing is still in flux, with some publishers charging flat fees while others are charging per impression, as is common in Web advertising. Others believe that pricing should be cheaper than print, since digital ads don't require the same cost for reproduction as print. Even in print, however, reproduction costs are generally much lower than costs involved in content production.

And advertisers aren't quite sure how to measure the success of advertising on the iPad. In print, advertisers pay for the potential to get in front of readers eyes. On the Web, each impression and click-though is counted and analyzed.

"We've got to figure out what the measurements are," Mark Ford, president of the Time Inc. News Group, told NYT. "It's not how you measure print, it's not, certainly, how you measure digital. It's going to be something different."

There are still questions about how to produce ad units for the iPad, and what types will appeal most to consumers. Interactive ads on the Web are most commonly produced using Flash, which isn't an option on the iPad.

AdMob, one of the largest mobile advertising companies, is taking a more cautious approach—it isn't yet selling ads for the iPad until it can test them on iPad hardware. Apple has plans to "redefine" mobile advertising by producing advertising units that leverage standards like HTML5 and CSS3, and plans to sell them through the recently acquired Quattro Wireless. However, Apple hasn't announced that anything will be ready in time for the launch of the iPad.

Whether the iPad and its mobile advertising opportunities prove fruitful for publishers and advertisers alike is still an open question. It looks like we can expect to see plenty of attempts to reach iPad users for at least several months after its launch.

Looks at 2000+ comments of people bitching at animated ads on a website. I am really wondering what the hell people are going to think on an iPad because there will be no ad-block for animated annoying ads.

That was me kneejerk reaction as well, but after thinking about it for more than 5 seconds I realized that

1) they cover many different tech companies and their big products soon to be released 2) apple is a popular tech company and this is THEIR product of 2010 3) tech trends. What apple or microsoft are doing is a pretty good indication of where everyone else is going too.4) average would be buyers of ipads dont read ars and everyone who reads here has already made up their minds about it, so quit bitching.

Steve Pacheco, FedEx's director of advertising, told WSJ that the options will be "mind-blowing." "You are taking something that used to be flat on a page and making it interactive and have it jump off the page," he said.

Here's to hoping Mr. Pacheco is engaging in more than a little bit of hyperbole here. Advertisers have a tendency to convince themselves that people actually want and enjoy advertising, when the reality is that most people just silently put up with it. But if ads really start jumping off the page and demanding interaction, it means they're going to start actively interfering with reading or viewing the content. People aren't likely to put up with that for long, and even if they do, are annoyance, frustration and anger really the results that advertisers want potential customers to associate with their products or brands?

Now, back to the matter at hand: I'm not opposed to advertising, as long as they're respectful of the reader. Make your ads as targeted as you can, if you're using multimedia, let me be in control of it. Show me an ad for an interesting product while not trying to distract me from the article I'm reading, and I'll take the time to watch your video, etc.

But if you obscure the article, autoplay with video or sound, etc... no.

Just what we need - you pay $500 or so for an iPad, then another $20 for a magazine, and then half the magazine page is a horribly annoying animated advertisement. One great thing about print is it's easy to ignore the advertisements - they don't sing to you, don't dance around the page, and don't link you to scam sites. I'll bet that at least 25% of the page will be ads and you will get new ads everytime you change the page. Maybe it will even refuse to work if you don't have a live connection to get new ads.

I hope that there's more animation pertaining to the articles themselves. Consider this my own peculiarity, but I'd love to see on-line newspapers that resemble those in the Harry Potter series, with short video clips pertaining to the topics.

Why are people dying to pay good money for something they cant really find a defining use for, pay more for magazines which can all be read elsewhere for free, and in the process get advertised to so they can be convinced into spending more money on other stuff they dont need?

I guess there's no good answer to those questions, people just love to consume for the sake of consuming. Apple has turned into a gigantic black hole for the consumerist zombies theyve created.

Until publishers unveil their iPad version—many won't be ready right at launch—we won't really what they have planned. I'm willing to see how it all shakes out before damning the practice outright.

During all the post-reveal announcements about WP7S (e.g. no multitasking, limited initial business support, only managed code) the only time I had a real concern was when that video came up with the car driving over the text content of an application. And for concern, read shudder of revulsion.

Even if I was looking to buy an iPad, this news would make me hold off until we "see how it all shakes out."

I don't think you need to single out Ars, the entire journalism industry has a humongous hardon for this thing because they think it might be their divine salvation from declining advertising rates.

This story finally gets to the real point behind all of the furious MSM fellating of the iPad -- which is that the traditional web is simply a lousy mechanism for print-style advertising. Unlike newspapers and magazines, people simply won't stand for 50% of web page content being adverts. The iPad, in theory, defines a new digital content paradigm that is closer to print, which is to say, it contains big fancy ads in an easy to use and unblockable format.

(Personally I think this is bunk and the iPad will quickly fall back into the web browser paradigm, but what do I know.)

As with websites I don't mind text or graphics ads.But I detest advertising that moves, blinks, makes sound, blocks/overlays content or needs to be clicked to go away. These are the things (in more or less ascending order) that distract from the content. And it becomes worse as the content becomes more attractive. At least my opinion.

There are frequently ads that I even like in print or TV and even online. But print and TV ads integrate with their respective media. On TV, the main content also moves.On a movie website I wouldn't even mind moving ads. But above properties become disturbing on a text site where I'd prefer to concentrate on reading the content.

I guess there will be a fair amount of try and error on the iPad.Maybe the lack of customizable ad-blocking on the device will actually help to weed out annoying concepts as customers will simply stop buying/using the contaminated content.

Thing about ads is that the better it is for advertisers the more repulsive it is for consumers. Sucks to have a business built on a failing model. The publishers are practically throwing money at Apple, saying "Save us Jeebus Jobs."

Big news is very excited about this, but what they don't understand I that it's another nail in their coffin. Their readership is dwindling not just because of price or format, but because the likes of the NYT & WSJ have proven that it's impossible for them to maintain editorial freedom when faced with increasing pressure from their sponsors. This article jus goes to show that with this switch to another new format, their frying even further entrenched in this big ad mindset. Until the media organizations can separate themselves from the advertisers and their influence, their readership will continue to dwindle. Regardless of the format.